


The Statement of Naomi Herne

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Canon-Typical Violence, Evan Lukas Isn't Dead, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, POV Martin Blackwood, POV Melanie King, Pre-Slash, Rosie is a Robot, Slaughter!Melanie, Xenoanthropology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “That’s a lot of purchases for two days,” remarked Martin, tilting his head to read the bill on top. All the item names were mysterious abbreviations.“It’s the most we’ve bought in many years,” said Rosie, sighing, disconnecting her secondary arms. They fell onto the carpet, steaming slightly. She picked them up and began to collapse them for packing. “There’s a lot of new acquisitions for the Library. Paper titles, too, courtesy of our sponsors. There’s also some first aid equipment? I’m not sure why Mr Bouchard thinks you need a grafter.”Martin shrugged. “Paper cuts?”Rosie shot him a comically doubtful look, but she sounded amused when she spoke. “Best get downstairs, Martin.” He was nearly out of earshot when he thought he heard her chuckle. It sounded like pebbles in a tin.The Magnus Archives—in the twenty-third century!A science fiction AU with alien ruins, spaceships, and hungryhungryfear gods back for a third helping.Very loosely based on the statement.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Naomi Herne/Evan Lukas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	1. MARTIN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin starts off a work week.

“—please do not harm the rats! They are a valuable part of our ecosystem!”

One of the others in the lift grumbled about rats gnawing on her succulents and received sympathetic humming noises from the people around her. Martin hummed too, even though he privately thought rats were quite sweet. They had such clever little paws.

The lift speakers chimed when it reached Old London, and Martin waited as the machinery in the walls equalised the pressure inside the lift. The Institute was in a posh part of the old city, so everything was hidden behind opaque metal panelling. (Not like the lift up to where he lived, which made enough noise to wake the dead.)

“For Monarch and country!” ended the canned announcement, and the doors opened.

This early in the day, there were relatively few people coming and going, and Martin was able to take his own time towards Chelsea. People sped by on chairs and wheels, using the magnetised strips set into the roads, but there were plenty of others who had chosen to walk. Martin could see why. It was a good day for walking; the day cycle had just begun, lighting the ceiling in soft blues and roses, and the air had a freshness to it Martin didn’t often encounter outside Old London. Soft coos drew his eyes to a nearby windowsill; his heart warmed at the sight of two doves snuggled up close to each other. Wasn’t often you saw something like that.

He bought a warm sandwich from a vending machine and ate it as he approached the Institute. It wasn’t a particularly impressive building, considering the age of some of the other structures down here, but there was a certain  _ thingness _ about it that made it stand out. Was it the smoked-glass owl perched above the door? It stared unblinkingly at him, its stylised head turning to follow him as he entered the building. Apparently the actual birds  _ did _ have necks that flexible, if you took Sasha’s word for it.

The lobby continued with the Earthly theme, all painted walls and diode lighting. Were there rules against dramatically altering Old London buildings? Probably were. It hadn’t been enough to drive off modernity completely—the chairs were recent additions, and Martin knew there was a standing charger tucked under the desk. “Hi Rosie.”

“Hello Martin!” said Rosie from behind her desk, Monday exasperation bleeding into her tone. She had sheaves of film in three arms and two screens somehow balanced on her fourth. “How was your weekend?”

“It was okay,” said Martin, gingerly. It wasn’t often that Rosie got out the extra limbs, and it rarely meant anything good. “Um. Do you need any help?”

“Martin, you angel,” said Rosie. She still sounded irritated--must have run out of memory and found it unable to switch tones. “Come over here. There’s a bill on the ground by my foot and I can’t reach that without dropping something else. On the pile with the—no, the other one—there, thank you.” She slid the screens onto her desk and began to rapidly sort the documents she was holding. Martin watched patiently until she was done, feeling conflicted. Mr Bouchard wouldn’t allow Rosie any more memory than the absolute minimum, for some reason, and that didn’t work too well with complicated situations. There was nothing he could do about it, either.

“I’m glad that’s over,” said Rosie. Her tone had finally changed.

“That’s a lot for two days,” remarked Martin, tilting his head to read the bill on top. All the item names were mysterious abbreviations.

“It’s the most we’ve bought in many years,” said Rosie, sighing, disconnecting the secondary arms. They fell onto the carpet, steaming slightly. She picked them up and began to collapse them for packing. “There’s a lot of new acquisitions for the Library. Paper titles, too, courtesy of our sponsors. There’s also some first aid equipment? I’m not sure why Mr Bouchard thinks you need a grafter.” 

Martin shrugged. “Paper cuts?”

Rosie shot him a comically doubtful look, but she sounded amused when she spoke. “Best get downstairs, Martin.” He was nearly out of earshot when he thought he heard her chuckle. It sounded like pebbles in a tin.

The Institute was mostly underground, but parts of it were newer than others. Like Artefact Storage, for one. It was mostly split up between old London and a sponsored outpost in the Cassini Division, and both parts followed the same construction patterns and had the same sterile feel to them. The Archives, however, were in that section of the building that had been brought over from Earth, and Martin was struck by the differences every time he climbed the stairs down to their floor.

The rooms were larger than Martin was used to, with higher ceilings and featureless painted walls. The furniture was old—Martin suspected some of the tables might even be  _ wood,  _ though Tim refused to accept it—and it had a Smell, like dusty paper and aged electronics. He’d be lying if he said it was comforting, but it  _ was _ familiar.

The lights in Jon’s room were on, and Martin scurried past as noiselessly as he was able.

Sasha’s corner of the assistants’ room was bright, though there were no signs of her having arrived yet. A duvet lay bunched up on the ground, lit in blue and green light from the screens arrayed above it. She’d probably left something running over the weekend again.

Tim’s cubicle, generously plastered in tiny Reminder! films and still wearing blinking holiday garlands, was also empty.

There was a clatter from the break room, and the sound of cabinets sliding shut. Martin tried to remain unmoved when Jon strode past him, mug in hand, entirely absorbed in the papers he held. He was wearing a stiff-collared shirt today, and he left the scent of pen ink and hothouse tea in his wake. Something unidentifiable twisted in Martin’s gut.

The Head Archivist’s door slammed shut. Martin breathed out, brought his screen out of sleep, and began to work on his tasks for the day.

…

Tim spun around in his seat and flicked a film dart at Sasha. He looked in the mood for a bit of banter. “Rosie says there’s someone coming in to make a statement.” 

Martin looked up from his research, blinking away the afterimages. “Really?” That didn’t happen very often. Jon was many things, but personable wasn’t one of them. Rosie tried to head them off with offers of creamy wood-paper statement sheets and fountain pens to write their statements with. “Didn’t she… you know?”

Tim turned and tapped a little at his screen, presumably asking the question. “Yeah. They said no. Bit of an odd character, apparently?” His face then fell, suddenly, and he raised his brows and nodded at one of Sasha’s wall-mounted screens. She’d switched it to one of the cameras in the hallway, and they could see the statement giver slowly approaching Jon’s door. Martin immediately understood what Tim meant.

The statement giver wore several layers of clothes, including a massive resin greatcoat liberally plastered in hazard tape. Their face was hidden by a cheap air filter, and stained bandages covered their hands. 

“Improvised hazmat suit,” said Sasha, her arms crossed. “See the duct tape around the cuffs and the mask?” She stabbed a command into the console before her, and a dialog box popped up on a screen closer to her. “Atmos doesn’t see any biocontaminants, though, obviously… still running a clean-through, just in case.” Martin heard the ancient pipes gurgle within the walls. The filters kicked in, humming softly, and he felt cool air flow down from the vents in the ceiling.

The statement giver paused in front of Jon’s door for a whole minute before raising their elbow and clumsily knocking with it.

“Jesus,” muttered Tim, sombrely. “Time to put in a touch lock?”

“It certainly explains their refusal to write,” said Sasha, voice level. 

Martin frowned absently as Jon called the statement writer in. “How’d they get into Old London anyway?” There were multiple checkpoints before the last lift, and the bots knew if you were a regular traveler or someone unusual _.  _ Wearing that kind of air filter--something more appropriate for junk mining in the rings than  _ Chelsea,  _ really--was definitely the sort of thing that would get you picked out. 

It went without saying, of course, that any kind of contagion that could possibly require a hazard suit to contain would never have been allowed into Old London at all.

“There  _ are _ other ways in,” said Sasha, and shot Martin a cryptic grin. “Just pointing it out.”

“You know the kind of people that show up here, though,” said Tim, dryly. “The odds are pretty good that they’re just really sweaty under all that.” 

Sasha smiled a bit pityingly. “Jon’s going to have a field day, isn’t he?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave a kudos/comment if you liked u.u <3


	2. MELANIE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie runs from a ruin, but it isn't done with her.

Melanie could feel the ship’s shudder in her bones.

She had overclocked the last two engines several hours ago, and replaced the fuel rods twice since then. There was  _ just  _ enough juice to get back to Britannia, if she got a clear gate and didn’t run into anything funny. She didn’t have the patience for comedians right now.

The lights flickered, and Melanie grimly turned off non-essential life support. Frost shot up the sides of the viewport as the ambient temperature dropped rapidly, and her breath drifted out in clouds from her mouth and nose. Her flight suit kept her reasonably warm, but every breath was like ice water in her veins.

The comms squawked. Britannia glimmered in Jupiter’s shadow, a grain of salt with five hundred million souls onboard, and Melanie stared at it as the opening sting played. “Hailing shīn-seven-oh-nine. Hornet class shīn-seven-oh-nine registered to Melanie King?”

“Shīn-seven-oh-nine requesting civilian clearance for landing,” said Melanie, unable to keep her tension out of her words. The fuel gauges were critical, they’d been that way since her third engine had collapsed and irradiated everything in the engine room. A delay spent in line to get in could mean the difference between a salvageable ship and being grounded for _ months _ while she put together the cash for a repair.

A persistent blinking alerted her to her matter sensor screen.  _ Approaching ship-class object.  _ How? There was nothing in sight, not even after a quick defrost of the viewport, and the lidar scans agreed. The closest ships were a string of trade convoys coming in from the Belt, a chain of metallic pods several minutes away, and nowhere near matter sensor range. Did her sensor array also get fried somehow?

“Clearance granted,” responded traffic control, and Melanie shuddered out a sigh. “Proceed to gate seventy-two.”

She’d barely input the instructions before the matter sensor began to howl, startling her.  _ COLLISION IMMINENT,  _ it insisted. Melanie still couldn’t see anything through the viewport—

—and suddenly there it was, out of bloody  _ nowhere,  _ bearing down on her, a great grim hulk of a transporter blocking out everything in view.

Melanie didn’t have time to scream. The emergency collision avoidance systems kicked in immediately, setting off the blasting caps towards the left wing, flinging wing and ship in opposite directions. The force of it shoved Melanie back against her seat violently enough to push the air out of her lungs. She gasped, her head reeling, and then began to cough and choke on the freezing air.

_ Don’t look outside.  _ Her ship was still tumbling, and had likely moved a considerable distance.  _ Don’t look outside.  _ Jupiter knew where Britannia was now. Melanie forced her eyes down to the dashboard and brought her ship out of its roll using commands alone, though she knew it was still moving. It took only a handful of careful corrective thrusts, but each one was heavy on the engines.

The comms were transmitting. “—seven-oh-nine? Are you there?”

“Yeah!” called Melanie, carefully checking herself. Her heart was beating loud enough to drown out the noises from the dashboard. God, did she still have enough fuel to make it to Britannia? She’d have to pay a junker to grab her wing, too. “I—I’m still here. In one piece. Shit, what  _ was  _ that?”

“Do you require assistance, shīn-seven-oh-nine?”

“I—ah.” That _ shunk _ she’d just heard had probably been the good engines ejecting the last of her fuel rods. Melanie squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the edge of the dashboard between her chilled fingers. She’d take being alive on a bloody station over being dead, any day. “Yeah, a tugboat would be great. One of the engines, it’s bust, s’leaking radiation like a—uh. Pretty badly.”

“Hold on, shīn-seven-oh-nine. We will contact you once a retrieval team is enroute.” The comms then began to play inappropriately jaunty hold music, because of  _ course  _ it did.

Resigned to waiting the couple of hours it would take them to get to her location, Melanie turned off the fuel alarms and put up a distress beacon. Not before defrosting the viewport one last time, though. She could still see the transporter that had nearly turned her into space junk, moving steadily towards Britannia, getting smaller as it did. It had no flag or symbol, but Melanie wouldn’t need them to remember what it looked like.

...

“Everything seems good,” said the doctor at gate seventy-two, putting her penlight back into her bag and standing up from the seat next to her. “A little radiation damage. You  _ should _ be fine with supplements, but keep that drip in for another four hours just in case.”

“Not my first rodeo,” said Melanie, managing a lopsided smile and pulling her collar up into place. It had only taken her two trips (and a lot of radiation burns) before she’d spent everything to her name on a well-shielded flight suit. Some things were investments. “Thanks, doc.”

The doctor nodded and patted her twice on the good shoulder before hurrying off. Melanie stayed where she was, seated next to her drip stand in the lobby of Customs and Salvage, waiting for the retrieval team to process her ship. She didn’t want to imagine the questions they’d have for her, but she had to come up with believable explanations for everything—the fresh ichor staining the bottom of the ship and the massive gouges clawed into the tail among them. And it was hardly as though they’d listen to anything she had to say about Precursor gardens.

_ Gardens.  _ What a way to describe the place. It hadn’t looked anything like a garden. The Precursors had probably meant well, something or other about ‘places of regrowth or regeneration’ or the like, real airy-fairy stuff, but the rock she’d escaped had most recently served as somewhere to store their war-wounded. All their weird greenery had been removed to make space, and all the new buildings had been the same mass-produced prefab variety the Precursors had begun to use in the decades immediately before they’d disappeared. She hadn’t even been  _ close  _ to the first person there—the ancient ichor coating the ground had been covered with human-sized shoeprints—but she’d still managed to trigger some long-dormant security protocol.

The Gardeners had always been passive constructs, but here they were openly hostile. One had chased her back to her ship, and she’d had to do some risky tumbles to get it off her tail. Jupiter, just  _ thinking  _ about it… Melanie dragged a hand down her face and looked around for a distraction.

For a civilian gate the place was downright deserted. The only other people in sight were the three in the gate administrator’s glass-doored office. Melanie was familiar with the admin, a friendly sort with two daughters and a fondness for jam biscuits, but the other two were strangers. They looked related, though, with the same large stature and pale hair, and it was obvious on sight that they were a well-off sort. 

They shifted slightly, putting a greater gap between them, and Melanie caught sight of the admin’s face. It was pale and sweaty, the skin around his eyes nearly blue—he was clearly  _ terrified,  _ and this was someone who went up against smugglers on the daily. She’d never seen him look like that before. Who  _ were _ these people? Where was the Customs police? She had no special fondness for Britannia’s ports but this admin had always been a decent sort, had helped her organise her gate passes when starting out—

The drip pulled at her hand, and Melanie realised she was on the balls of her feet, her hand around the grip of her baton. What—what was she  _ doing? _ Hadn’t her baton been clipped to her belt? Her fingers were white-knuckled around the grip, and she didn’t seem to be able to loosen them—ugh, she couldn’t let  _ go _ —

“You would be Melanie King, yes?”

Melanie looked up, startled. The two pale strangers were now standing in front of her, somehow having walked across Customs and Salvage without making a sound. One was rangy and bespectacled, holding a document case, and the other was bearded, barrel-chested, and nearly twice her size. They had the same sharp nose and emotionless ice-chip eyes.

The bigger of the two smiled amiably at her. Melanie had seen the shells of first-generation warbots smile with more sincerity. “The name’s Peter Lukas. I’m given to understand we nearly had an  _ unfortunate _ accident in—”

“That was  _ your  _ transporter?” interrupted Melanie, taking a step forward, her shoulders back. A strange, heady fire flooded her chest and neck. She wasn’t going to take this cheek; what had he been planning to do? Confront  _ her _ for damages for her wing striking his ship’s hull?  _ Fuck _ that. Her words came through gritted teeth. “You’ve got some nerve!”

They didn’t look quite so unmoved now. The smaller one murmured something she couldn’t quite hear over the thudding in her ears, and Peter Lukas’ eyes glittered. He dropped the smile. “Our sincere apologies, Ms King. I’ll be having Evan here... arrange to compensate you, hm? For any repairs you need done. Does that sound acceptable?”

There was a dull crackling in the background. Melanie narrowed her eyes. “I want that in print.”

“We can do that,” said Peter Lukas, brows raised. “First, of course, if you would—we’re attracting the wrong kind of attention.” He gestured at her arm, and Melanie glanced down to see sparks arcing over the shaft of her baton. But that wasn’t all. Her body was tense, her feet angled to attack, and she’d pulled the drip stand to the ground, somehow missing both the noise that would’ve made and the sensation of the junction pulling out of her hand. 

A quick survey revealed that wasn’t all she’d missed. There were a half dozen Customs police in the room now, and they weren’t being particularly discreet. Melanie inhaled and forced herself to relax—she could shake to pieces over this in the security of her room, not  _ here _ —before straightening her feet and putting her baton away. Her limbs felt like they were full of static, moving in sharp, jagged lines.

“Much obliged,” said Peter Lukas, the smirk in his voice very nearly audible, and the  _ rage  _ that flooded her—! Melanie breathed out, blinked hard, and crossed her arms instead. Her teeth were grit together so firmly her jaw ached. Something was incredibly wrong here—she knew she had a temper, but this wasn’t like anything she’d experienced before. Was she coming off the rush of escaping the Garden? A delayed reaction to that mess of a launch? Perhaps a memetic agent of some kind; it wouldn’t be the first time a Garden had been equipped with one of them. She didn’t know, and not knowing sat poorly with her.

Peter Lukas hadn’t missed any of that, of course, and he was still watching her as Evan passed him a sheet of film. He finally looked away to skim the agreement, and Melanie stared silently as he pricked his thumb and dragged it across the bottom, the red expanding to fill the signature strip. She felt herself untense very slightly at the sight—he intended to follow through on compensation, if nothing else.

“Ms King.” He passed her the agreement before they walked off. Melanie didn’t take her eyes off them till the lift doors blocked her line of sight; when she looked down at the film, she saw she’d unconsciously crumpled one side of it in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know if i've screwed up the physics, thank you
> 
> do kudos/comment if you liked. or even if you didn't, aha


End file.
